Making early mistakes
A lifetime ago, my only goal was to be a professional surfer. I was good at certain things like lining up photoshoots and getting companies to sponsor me to represent them. I was way less good at competing. I stopped competing after my senior year of college and haven’t missed it.
But I’m still obsessed with competitive surfing and I’m still a student of the sport.
Years ago, one of my favorite surfers of all time, 2001 World Champion CJ Hobgood, was giving some advice to young pros and said that in his warmup, he likes to “get all his junky moves out.” He likes to make early mistakes.
I’m not sure if he knew it at the time or not, but he was talking about regression to the mean.
CJ chooses to make mistakes before his heat, when the consequences are minimal, knowing that the probability is that he’ll return to his (mean) elite form.
I was recently listening to a conversation between Adam Grant and Daniel Kahneman that dug into the process of coming up with ideas.
Kahneman says, “I have never thought that ideas are rare. I think that’s generally true but not generally acknowledged… The idea is ‘This is an area where there is gold and I’m going to look for it.’ And formulating a new question, that’s an idea.”
He claims that doesn’t come up with better ideas (there is a lot of objective evidence that this isn’t true but we’ll take his word for it…), he’s just better at letting go of the dead end ideas.
The research and strategy implications are clear:
- Start with a clear sense of what “gold” is
- Believe that it’s there, somewhere
- Develop experimental hypotheses about where and how you’ll find it
- Think beyond just what’s worked before (As Dua Lipa says, “Dare to be shit.”)
- Know that reaching dead ends is part of finding gold
